


Dog Days A'Coming

by Little Miss Miki (Little_Knight_Mik)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Rating May Change, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3111347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Knight_Mik/pseuds/Little%20Miss%20Miki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You frown, hook them onto the collar of your shirt, and flop onto the nearest smuppet pile. You get the feeling it’s going to be a long time before you get used to living with your ecto-whatever the fuck, and an even longer time before you’ll be able to convince him to loan you <i>something</i> to contact someone with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dog Days A'Coming

**Author's Note:**

> eyyy second fic for this pseud!
> 
> few things to say in this author's note and then I'll be on my way: First is that this is going to have an unknown amount of chapters, but i don't think it'll surpass ten, let alone five. Second is that this is listed as underage since, as you'll see in this chapter, Dirk and Dave are physically 16 and 13, respectively, due to the game spitting them out in their starting ages -- kinda like a sort of "it was all a dream" thing mixed with "retrieve your fallen chess pieces" (if that makes sense) deal
> 
> but yeah, enough from me! i hope you guys enjoy the fic and i'll be sure to keep updates as frequent as possible!

It’s not the most glamourous of landings, but it’s still one that proves effective in testing your survival instincts. The water hitting your back kills -- you were probably falling for a bit before you came to -- and you make the idiotic (but still expected) mistake of breathing a hiss of pain; a hiss that, as expected, leaves you inhaling _a lot_ of water. It doesn’t take long for you to realise that you’re submerged, that you’re not being weighed down by your God Tier clothing, and it only takes a moment of flailing to get you back to the surface again. You splutter and throw your arms wildly about, your shades falling off of your face and slowly sinking into the water’s depths. You desperately try to reach for them, but only succeed in splashing yourself in the face and inhaling even more water -- this time up your nose.

You eventually give up on your shades after attempting to dive for them a few times, and start to wonder how you’re going to explain such an uncool blunder to John as you take in your surroundings. There’s a fuckton of water, no land in sight along any view of the horizon, and the closest thing you can see is what appears to be an apartment floor being held above sea level by metal framework. You glance down at yourself, find that your God Tier PJs have been replaced by your previous Derse PJs, and suddenly you remember why -- you’d played for three years, and then some, as your Dreamself; it’s probably best that the game had spat you back out as your Dreamself. You’re not sure what you’d do if you crashed into reality after so long, only to die from wounds your original body had sustained on Jade’s planet.

As though on cue, there’s a crash of water nearby -- a body hitting it in a similar fashion as you had. You whirl in its direction, fighting the ripples that push you back somewhat, and wait for whomever to surface. When you catch sight of your bloodied body, familiar red sleeves splayed out and blood mixing with the water, you find yourself staring in blank shock. “ _Neat_ ,” you mutter sardonically.

It takes a moment of hyping yourself up (you haven’t dealt with a dead Dave in a while, god damn), but you finally manage to doggy paddle over to your body and flip him over. To your dismay, his shades are cracked -- you’re fairly certain that one of the shards that came out after impact is lodged in his eye.

Yeah, no, you aren’t touching those things unless you feel like pulling out an eyeball along with them.

You shove your body away, float away from the blood he’s trailing, and sigh loudly. You sigh three more times, almost as though hoping to get someone’s attention, but really it’s so stupid -- who’s going to hear you out here? Probably a shark or a fish. You hope not a dolphin. Some type of bird would be nice.

It takes a few minutes of drifting for you to finally give up on just waiting, and you begin to set yourself goals.

Goal #1: Freestyle to the apartment.

Goal #2: Scale the frame.

Goal #3: Break in like a boss and befriend the owner.  _If_ there’s an owner.

You feel oddly satisfied with these goals, and set off to complete your first task. The swim to the apartment itself is tiring, although you thank Bro’s rigorous training (although to be honest it was more him mopping the floor with you every god damn day) that you’re able to make it further than most people before you call in a break. You’re past the halfway point, but you don’t have much time to rest; the water’s moving you faster than you can doggy paddle back to your original spot, and the last thing you need it to be farther away from your goal than you need to be.

After your minute-long break, you’re back to freestyling to the apartment; you simultaneously shout in excitement and in pain when your hand collides with one of the crossed bars. Your knuckles are killing you, you think you may be bleeding a little, and you definitely felt some kind of crack from the impact. But you honestly don’t care -- your first goal has just been completed, and you’ll be damned if you don’t even try to climb this thing.

It’s easier said than done, though. The framework is spaced out farther than you can reach, and you have no choice but to move around, back and forth, between different sides of the building, just to keep from falling off. You curse the game for not letting you keep your kickass flying abilities, which should’ve been a given with your  _Derse_ body.

Fuck Sburb.

You take another breath a third of the way up, letting the sun dry you as you balance on your feet and grasp the bar above you for dear life. It’s reminiscent of when you’d had to climb the antenna on the roof just to get to your artefact, although you at least have a somewhat softer landing beneath you if you fall this time.

Probably. You’re well aware that water can hurt. And you don’t think you have it in you to swim much more.

You huff and puff, shaking out the hand that you’d hit the framework with, and silently scold yourself for how out of shape you’ve gotten. Three whole years on that damn meteor, you tell yourself, and not once did you decide to climb all the things and do all the gym routines. Granted, you had a juggalo to keep an eye open for, and the Mayor was too damn precious to just  _not_ hang out with. Excuses, excuses, you think. Shame on you, Dave, and everything you hold dear to you.

Which at this point can’t be much.

At it again, you make it halfway up the building before you’re actually noticed. Accidentally, of course -- the front door opens and a metal head pokes out, sitting there and watching you for just a few minutes as you pause and watch back. The head retreats back into the apartment; you resume your climbing. It’s just as you arrive at the apartment’s doorstep that you notice the metal thing hadn’t shut the door, practically inviting you inside. You smirk, cross off goal number three, and continue to scale the frame.

You reach the opening, arms flying to the carpeted floor and clinging for dear life, and then suddenly a sword is being pointed at your face, right between your eyes. You freeze and stare up, finding -- surprise, surprise -- your ecto-brother-father. Dirk, or something.

You immediately uncheck goal number three.

He stares down at you silently for a moment, apparently having arrived around the same time as you, if his own Derse PJs are anything to go by. You both must’ve fallen from the same height, only in different areas. Does this mean the game miscalculated, or had it possibly dropped you in the ocean on purpose? You feel like the latter holds more truth in this case.

Seriously. Fuck Sburb.

Dirk shifts on his feet, the tip of the sword prodding the bridge of your nose lightly, and you feel a drop of blood start to trail down your nose as he announces, “We’re gonna have to lay down some ground rules, if you’re stayin’ here.”

You roll your eyes, which prompts his to click his tongue in annoyance. It’s now that you remember your shades are twenty leagues under the sea.

“First of all, bedroom’s mine. Futon’s where I store most of my things, and also where I leave Brobot in sleep mode.  _You_ will get the smuppet and hat pile.”

“Oh hell no--”

“ _Second_ ,” he cuts you off. “This is not up for debate. First come, first served, bro.”

You huff, tap your fingers impatiently. Your arms are starting to hurt from holding you up this entire time, and your feet are constantly slipping on the metal you’re trying to balance on.

“Third, we stick to a proper exercise regime and build up our strength.”

“Why?” you demand, glaring at him. You know for a fact that when he says “we”, he means daily strifes that last for god knows how long, and you are  _not_ ready to have your ass handed to you by a younger Bro -- at least not until you’ve built up your strength in your own time.

“Why not?” is the answer he shoots back. “Contrary to what we’d all hoped, our world --  _my_ world -- isn’t the way you knew it to be. It’s exactly how I grew up in it. On top of it all, despite the Condesce not following us through, your troll friends  _did_ , and this means that their species probably reproduced here and made their homes here. The world is flooded, which means right now all we’re at risk of seadwellers and their lusii killing off humanity as game.”

You sigh. Your arms are hurting and you just want to lie down, maybe rummage around for another set of shades and talk this shit out with Rose or something. “Alright, I get it--”

“ _No_ , you don’t.” He’s scowling now, freckled nose scrunched up in disgust. “Humans are a dying breed, even without the Her Imperious Condescension here to hunt us down exclusively. On top of that, the apartment would make for a decent hive that we’d be challenged for. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get my ass kicked six ways to Sunday and then thrown into the ocean, where I’ll be forced to reenact Jonah and the whale with a much grizzlier ending.” With a final huff, he growls at you, “That’s  _why_.”

“Okay, okay!” Fuck, you’re going to fall back into the water at this rate. “Smuppet pile bed, constant strifing; none of which is up for discussion. I get it -- just let me the fuck in already.”

Dirk’s apparently not done, because he let’s out a hollow laugh that has you extremely concerned for your current situation. Before you can even ask what his goddamn deal is, he withdraws the sword and replaces it with his foot, pushing against your face -- and, in turn, pushing you a few inches outside. You panic and grasp at the carpet with even more desperation, digging your nails right into the fabric and feeling your fingertips burn.

“I didn’t even get to the best part,” Dirk says. He gives you another slight nudge, and your feet slip off of the metal. You panic even more. “Break any of these rules and I won’t hesitate to kick you out myself and feed you to the local fauna.”

When he asks you if you understand, you nod frantically and pray he removes his foot so you can climb into the apartment. You’re too freaked out to use your words, and you know for certain he’s going to literally kick you out if you say the wrong thing. It takes a few seconds, but finally his foot is lifted from your face. You pull yourself inside. You nearly collapse against the wall. You watch as Dirk nonchalantly drags a headless body to the door and throws it out. He asks if you’d mind passing him the head that’s next to you. You nearly scream when you finally notice the head to your right; it looks to belong to the body Dirk had just dumped out the door not even a moment earlier, and you almost panic when you see the familiar triangular shades, but manage to reign in the shock enough to toss the head to him. All you have to do is pretend its a dead Dave, possibly from an alternate timeline where John never sent those kickass shades that belonged to Stiller, once upon a time.

Dirk shuts the door after dumping the head with its body, turns to you, and nods in the general direction of the hand you’d hit against the building’s frame. “First thing,” he notes, “is that we take care of that before you mess it up even more.”

Again you roll your eyes. Again you forget your absence of eyewear.

He practically pulls you to your feet by the collar of your pyjamas (after a good thirty seconds of awkwardly reaching for you, which was honestly both hilarious and unsettling); you’re dragged towards the bathroom, shoved onto the toilet, and ordered to wait while he gets his medicine box. He leaves the door ajar as he hurries out in order to find his shit, and you casually glance around the room to note any differences in decor. Aside from the lack of puppets dangling in the shower, it’s not much different from your own apartment’s bathroom. If anything, it’s much more well-kept. There’s even a towel similar to the one you’d used to clean up some stuff just as the game was starting, although it seems to be folded neatly on the sink and just out of the way of the--  _Jesus Christ what the fuck_.

You jump from your spot with a yelp, eyes wide and jaw dropped as you stare into the mirror. You’d spent three years in that game -- three years growing up, sifting through puberty with expert knowledge in most areas, and even earning a few scars of your own in that first year of knowing Karkat. Yet the person in the mirror isn’t the one you’d watched change over time -- over the course of thirty-six months; over the course of one-hundred and fifty-six weeks;  _over the course of one-thousand and ninety-five days_.

This person is the thirteen-year-old who never even wanted to play the game in the first place.

God, you feel short.

You slump back onto the toilet seat with a deflated exhale and ponder on a few things. Why did the game make you young again? Why do you remember everything that’s happened over the last three years? Why does Dirk look older than you, especially since it’s his dreamself that came back? Why did the game spit you out in  _his_ world instead of  _yours_?

The door is nudged open after a few minutes, and you barely even look at Dirk as he sets to work wrapping up your hand. He explains what you’ve done in complex medical terms you’re unfamiliar with, but gives you a verbal “tl;dr” by saying that you’ll need to keep use of the hand to a minimum for a while, and to regularly change the bandage so it doesn’t get irritated. You thank him silently, still wondering about a few things, and barely notice as he gives you what you suspect to be a scrutinous stare. There’s a wall of silence between the two of you for a moment or two, which he finally deigns to break himself.

“You’re smaller than I remember,” he notes. You nod, mumble that your physical age has shot right back to thirteen, and note that he barely looks any different. “I played the game when I was almost sixteen,” he adds. You nod once more.

Conversation dies after that. Dirk leads you on a tour of the apartment (you don’t mention that you know where everything is, but drop a few hints as to what you can tell is different from your own home) and finally ends the entire tour at his bedroom door. He says he’ll be spending some time sorting things out, but before that he’ll start looking for a spare pair of shades for you. He mutters something about you looking weird with your face so open, to which you grumble about not really having much of a choice between diving to the bottom of the ocean, taking a hazardous pair, or going without.

Regardless, he hands you a pair and sends you on your way, telling you that food is in the fridge and not to mind the Auto-Responder (which he quickly corrects to “Hal”); he shuts the door behind him, and you’re left standing there holding a pair of shades similar to the ones you grew up wearing.

You frown, hook them onto the collar of your shirt, and flop onto the nearest smuppet pile. You get the feeling it’s going to be a long time before you get used to living with your ecto-whatever the fuck, and an even longer time before you’ll be able to convince him to loan you  _something_ to contact someone with.


End file.
